


Your Whole Life Flashes Before Your Eyes

by SamFuckingWinchester



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, Kind of Gen, M/M, Past Abuse, Pre-Series, Wincest - Freeform, but is anything gen in supernatural, season 5
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-17
Updated: 2015-10-17
Packaged: 2018-04-26 18:23:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5015296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SamFuckingWinchester/pseuds/SamFuckingWinchester
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In reference to "Dark Side of the Moon" in Season 5. As a kid, Sam runs away to Arizona. It doesn't go as planned.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Your Whole Life Flashes Before Your Eyes

**Author's Note:**

> Me again. Comments are always appreciated. -Jensen

He hasn’t even done anything wrong and he knows he’s in trouble. Just thinking about running has him paranoid, and it’s all he can do to hide his peculiar behavior from his ever-present big brother. Does Dean always hover this much? How often does he actually cancel pool night to hang out with Sam? Since when does Dad come back sober?  


When he sees the Arizona welcome sign as the bus crosses the border, he knows there’s no going back. His Walkman is on, headphones in, but somehow he keeps hearing the ring and buzz of the phone he long tossed out, picturing Dean worrying himself to death. He sees his brother come back to an empty motel room, trying to explain to their father that “No, I didn’t lose him. I mean he’s _gone_.” If Sam thought John had slapped him hard, he can’t imagine what punishment will be dealt to his brother. Sam flinches and takes his earbuds out, stuffs them away in his bag, and gets off the bus at the next stop.  


It’s not as if he’d meant to get a dog. Hell, he could barely feed himself right now, much less another mouth that couldn’t even verbalize that he was grateful. It’s just that the dog sort of let himself in. And really, with all that fur, it didn’t seem like the right thing for Sam to do, leave him out in the Flagstaff heat. He was skin and bones when he made his home on the ratty couch next to Sam, and was so named from then on. Bones ended up being more company than Sam had imagined he would need. A golden retriever wasn’t going to make fun of him for having nightmares. Better yet, he could tell someone that they were about Dean, about losing him. Sam wondered if maybe Dean was having those sorts of dreams too.  


When five days had passed, Sam thought about calling. He’d walk through downtown with Bones, using an old rope as a leash, and in every boy he saw Dean, in every man he saw his father, in every rumble of an engine he saw his dad’s black Chevy. There were only two times Sam really considered running back to the only home he knew, and that walk was one of them.  


By the first full week Sam had proven to himself that if he really wanted to make it on his own, he definitely could. Admittedly, he didn’t get much rest, because every time he closed his eyes he saw Dean. And admittedly, he didn’t get much sightseeing done, mostly because he didn’t have the energy to walk Bones when he’d just had three bags of onion rings for breakfast. Also, admittedly, the room he was staying in smelled like dog and the bathroom at a truck stop, because he didn’t have anything to clean it with. But with that in mind, he was pretty damned proud that he could keep himself and a dog alive without his over-bearing brother or obsessive drunk of a father to warn him about demon traps under the rugs or salt lining the doors and windows. (He did it anyway, of course he did, but it was of his own volition, and that’s what mattered.) He watched plenty of the cooking channel, when fighting the nightmares became too much of a task. At midnight on a Friday he walked outside, shirtless in the cool air, and wished so deeply for his brother that his chest ached and it felt like his insides were melting right into the ground. When the clock struck one in the morning, Sam considered leaving for the second time. He heard Bones give a bark of warning, and turned around to go back inside.  


The second week was better, and worse. The awful dreams about his brother had all but stopped, and Sam wondered if maybe he’d tricked his brain into thinking he was out of the family business for good. He’d taught Bones how to sit, roll over, lay down, and speak. He could name a few of the streets he regularly walked, the clerk at the corner shop, Harold, and made a batch of bacon mac and cheese that could rival his brother’s. Of course, that was about the time that said brother showed up to cart him off. He’d left the door open, so Bones could go in and out as he pleased, and as he was shoved into the backseat of the impala, he thanked himself for doing it. Maybe his dog could find a real home. After all, Sam was back where he belonged.  


Dean was angry for a whole six days. It took them half that time to get to Grand Forks, North Dakota anyway, so the car rides were silent and brooding, minus the occasional outburst from John, which Sam let his father have. When Dean decided to stop being angry, it lasted a whole hour before he was frustrated and moody again, blended with sporadic bursts of “I’m not angry at you, Sam, you know that, right?” and “He shouldn’t have hit you, but he’s our dad, he knows best.” At this point, Sam is just grateful that Dean is speaking with him again. He doesn’t mention the nightmares, or the way he thought he was dying and becoming one with the dust of Arizona. He doesn’t mention the premeditation of leaving. He doesn’t mention that his father hit him so hard he stumbled back into the impala, that it wasn’t a door-ding but his hands and wrists scrambling for purchase as he fell, leaving a mark on the car. Instead, Sam gets off his bed and hugs his brother. “I’m sorry, Dean.” And, after a beat, “Me too, Sam.”

**Author's Note:**

> Fun fact: The title of this fic is what the writers originally named episode 5.16. It was later changed to reflect the Pink Floyd album. Hope you enjoyed.


End file.
